Business Ethics Links 7-20-2016 The Orange Leader Edition

This is a radical time in American politics: a time the pundits and elected politicians thought would never come. After two decades of populist anger, the elderly rebels of Pat Buchanan’s pitchfork army finally stormed the barricades of the establishment and hoisted an orange leader atop the smoking rubble.

“Fatigue is the great equalizer here,” study researcher Stuart Phillips, a professor of kinesiology at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, said in a statement. “Lift to the point of exhaustion, and it doesn’t matter whether the weights are heavy or light.”

“It is not acceptable that MAN, Volvo/Renault, Daimler, Iveco and DAF, which together account for around 9 out of every 10 medium and heavy trucks produced in Europe, were part of a cartel instead of competing with each other,” European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.

The complaint was filed on behalf of more than 50 plaintiffs who have performed with WWE or its predecessors since the 1970s, including Joseph “Road Warrior Animal” Laurinaitis and Paul “Mr. Wonderful” Orndorff.

It accused Stamford, Connecticut-based WWE and Chairman Vince McMahon of intentionally classifying wrestlers as “independent contractors” rather than employees, as a means to avoid liability under applicable worker protection laws.

“WWE placed corporate gain over its wrestlers’ health, safety, and financial security, choosing to leave the plaintiffs severely injured and with no recourse to treat their damaged minds and bodies,” the complaint said.

It is sad that a corporate behemoth like WWE can make suck enormous profits and simply evade any responsibility for the broken bodies it leaves behind. jp

These women make the advertising money by winning and winning a lot. They make American soccer a success and get paid less than their male counterparts who are not as competitive. What’s going on here?

Is there a justification here of any significance beyond simple mulish male stubborn pride?

I don’t think so.

Simple business ethics says equal pay for equal work but in this case the women are doing better work and still not getting the same. jp

That’s right! Sexual assault is not an affirmative act committed with intent, it’s a result of raging hormones. Who would’ve thought? In my apparently irrelevant law school, they taught us that rape was an intentional act and punishable by imprisonment and fines. But lo and behold, the new Big Twelve Commisioner has this to say –

“But let it suffice to say as it pertains to all of our institutions, we are very committed as a group of 10 schools to eradicating sexual assault on our campuses. It almost goes without saying that when you combine alcohol and drugs and raging hormones and the experiences of 18 to 22 years old, it’s probably unrealistic to think that these kinds of things are never going to happen.”

It’s just nature. So, you see – we just have to accept that sexual predators are among us. It’s just natural.

And that means that rigorous enforcement of the laws, the jailing and punishment of the perpetrators whenever found – we are not going to talk about that. After all, nature!

Milo Yiannopoulos, the technology editor for Breitbart.com, tweeted as @Nero. Before he was banned, he had more than 338,000 followers and called himself “the most fabulous supervillain on the internet” for his provocations online.

A known contrarian who likened rape culture to Harry Potter (“both fantasy”) and affectionately referred to Donald Trump as “daddy”, he emerged as a spokesman for the “alt-right” in the wake of the Gamergate movement.

Climate change, and other environmental concerns, are unlikely to receive much, if any, attention during the Republican convention in Cleveland this week. This is despite a slew of temperature records being broken – June was the 14th consecutive month of record heat around the world – and extreme examples ofArctic ice decline and drought and wildfires in the US west.

But the Republican gathering has been targeted by conservative voices calling for climate science to be accepted and for national parks to be preserved, rather than opened up for drilling and other development.

Hillary Clinton will make history next week in Philadelphia when she formally becomes the first woman to be the presidential nominee of a major party. But she is not the first woman to be nominated as a presidential candidate: that distinction is held by Victoria Claflin Woodhull. In 1872, she became a third-party candidate, running against the incumbent Republican president, General Ulysses S Grant, and his Democratic challenger, New York publisher Horace Greeley. She would not have been able to vote for herself – that right would not be granted to American woman for another 50 years – but that did not deter this pioneering feminist from making a historic bid for change.

Her life story would not be out of place in a 19th-century novel. It is peopled by a colourful array of charlatans, churchmen, philanthropists and philanderers. It is also a classic American tale: a triumph over adversity – poverty, abusive parents, and a bad marriage – and a rise to prominence in the most vital social movements of the day.